I’ve been a Labor and Delivery nurse for 34 years. When I graduated from nursing school in 1976, I was 4 months pregnant with Hudson’s daddy. During those years of helping women bring their precious little gifts from God into the world, I have had the occasion to observe some pretty interesting family dynamics.

The one I want to relate here is about grandbabies and their grandmothers. I can’t tell you how many women I have been around, including personal friends and co-workers, who evidently feel it is their kids’ obligation to make them grandmothers. I have heard statements like “it’s about time they made me a grandma,” and “I told my kids they’d better get busy and make me a grandma.” Now I wanted to be a grandma as much as anybody, but long before my children were out of grade school decided that if THEY decided to have children, thus making me a grandma, it was a bonus. As they grew older, we had this discussion. I made it very clear that it was their choice, not mine, whether or not they would become parents. Having a baby to make your own mother happy is about the worst reason in the world, in my opinion.

Because that’s what happens first: they become parents. Only after that happens, grandparents happen.

My daughter-in-law, Hudson’s Mommy, and I are very close. She has known from the day they became serious as a couple that there was going to be no pressure from us about where they choose to live, what they choose to do as careers, and a number of other things, but also whether they would choose OR NOT to become parents.

Lucky for me, they wanted very much to have a family, and worked hard at it. It was no bed of roses, and maybe that is part of why Hudson is so very precious to us. I suspect it’s only a small part, however, because every time I see that sweet face with that big grin, my heart melts…how could it not?